A time capsule of the greatest financial mania in the history of mankind, told in real-time by regular folks and patriots. May future generations better understand the madness of crowds, and how power and money corrupt.

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Throughout Wall Street's history, major financial system upheavals often have culminated with the spectacular failure of a marquee name.

That was the case in December 1994, when Orange County filed for bankruptcy protection after getting caught on the wrong side of a sharp jump in interest rates.

In September 1998, the Federal Reserve helped arrange a bailout of the giant investment fund Long-Term Capital Management after it neared collapse from bad bets in wildly swinging markets.

In those and similar instances the big-name debacles marked the peak of the financial system crises, not the start of something worse.

But this time around, with Friday's surprise announcement that the Fed would temporarily inject its own money into tottering brokerage giant Bear Stearns Cos., many Wall Street pros say they have little confidence that the move is a prelude to better times for beleaguered markets and the economy.

Indeed, some experts say Bear Stearns' woes warn of potentially larger calamities that will severely test the Fed, the economy and, ultimately, taxpayers as the government gets more deeply involved in fixing the markets' troubles.

"We will lose, in some form, several major financial institutions before this is over," said veteran economist Allen Sinai of Decision Economics Inc. in New York.

Actually I hold a contrarian view of Casey - I LOVE the fact that some 21 year old kid brought the financial system to its knees - the fact the banks/Countrywide, etc. gave Casey the money was the problem - hell, what kid wouldn't take a million or two?? We should make Casey a national hero for exposing the fraud and greed in the financial industry.